


the morning sun

by saunatonttu



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cuddling, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Pining, Sort Of, dicks are mentioned, forest encounters, gerome spends a lot of time brooding while watching over minerva, tea time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 18:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12018312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saunatonttu/pseuds/saunatonttu
Summary: Somewhere along the way the unexpected happens and Gerome finds himself burdened with romantic feelings. When it happened, he can't say for sure. But the feelings are there.





	the morning sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [earthsgayestdefender](https://archiveofourown.org/users/earthsgayestdefender/gifts).



Gerome sees him and his mother and thinks, bitterly and not at all reflecting his own issues onto him, _why are you wasting your time like that._

He does not care. He observes, and it is decidedly different.

One could ask Gerome how he has the time to observe Morgan, but he wouldn’t answer nor would he even have a response ready for that. He doesn’t know why he _should_ care. So he does what he usually does in the face of unpredictable interpersonal situation: focuses on Minerva and grooming her.

When everyone else is enamoured with their families, Gerome only has Minerva. Looking at Severa and her family issues, he has decided that his solution works best for him, no matter what his youthful moth-... _Cherche_ , has to say about it.

That said, Gerome’s attention drifts to Morgan more than he likes - and then there’s Inigo, who calls him out on it with a casual smile and a teasing tone that ruffles all of Gerome’s feathers. Naturally Gerome’s emotional reserves are running dry as impatience rears its head and prickles at his skin.

“Inigo,” he speaks up first that day, back turned but conscious of Inigo’s unmistakable presence regardless, “do you not tire of saying the same thing every single day?”

It’s the same thing with Inigo as it is with Morgan: he too is way too involved with a mother that isn’t truly the mother he knows. Gerome expects it from him though, with the starvation for affection that lingers in Inigo’s eyes. With Morgan… Gerome never knows what it is, if it is truly the supposed amnesia that has the young man cling to the only face he recognizes.

Gerome wishes his thoughts would quit going in the same circles.

Inigo clears his throat and snickers, his laughter as warm as the Ylissean sun. Like Morgan’s shut-eyed smiles.

“If you listened to me one of these days, I would still say it a thousand times over.”

Gerome has always preferred the dark; the sun is far too bright, be it Ylisse’s or Valm’s.

 

*

 

_“Hey, Gerome,” Inigo tells him often, “it’s not so bad to enjoy the moment while it lasts, you know?”_

 

*

 

Morgan doesn’t shy away from Gerome despite his surly, isolationist attitude. Like a mosquito hellbent on sucking his blood, Morgan keeps inserting himself into Gerome’s company. Inigo isn’t always around either, so Gerome can’t blame him for once.

“You don’t even know me,” he points out to Morgan as he sits down with him while Minerva grazes about with wild wyverns. The Shepherds are in no hurry; there’s time for the luxury of lazing around and, gasp, social interactions.

It’s more peaceful than the life that belongs to Gerome, and he is quick to remind himself of that every time. Morgan, however...

Morgan bumps his shoulder against Gerome’s arm, not minding the grimace that creeped over Gerome’s face at the motion. “Do I have to? Even if I can’t remember, I can tell we were friends.”

The mask, thankfully, hides most of the flush that heats up his face. There’s no hiding the faltering in his voice, though. “Whatever gave you that idea? I certainly haven’t given any reason for you to think so.”

Minerva peers at him from a distance, and Gerome thinks she’s saying _don’t lie to yourself, boy_. She’s always been brutally honest – wyverns are known for it, those shrieks are hardly gentle. Gerome narrows his eyes at her, ignoring the warmth of Morgan’s body leaning into him. It becomes hard to leave unnoticed when the sun continues to glare down and suffocate Gerome in his all-black get-up.

Morgan’s voice comes all too close to his face, “Because we work well together in battle, Gerome. Mother always says those who trust each other work best together out there.”

Gerome catches sight of Morgan’s wistful smile, the way it softens Morgan’s already gentle eyes. “I don’t know why, but I get the feeling you trust me a lot.”

It’s not the first time Gerome nearly swallows his tongue, and it won’t be the last, but of all the instances he will remember this one most clearly.

 

*

 

Inigo’s even more a fool around Morgan than Gerome thinks he is in general. Laughing just a little too loud, cheeks flushed painfully red whenever Morgan says something particularly touching, and desperate insistency of having Morgan join him for a cup of tea or five -- all of it is rather undignified, he thinks from the sidelines.

He’s… a bit of a hypocrite, apparently.

Even more so when Morgan invites him to join them for their “tea party” and he finds himself stammering an excuse but gives in regardless.

Gerome hates himself a little as he sits down with them at one of the round tables at the local tea house Inigo had found after diligent research into the village’s day and night life. (Chasing skirts, Gerome assumes, for posterity’s sake.)

“Black tea?” Inigo quirks his brows at Gerome’s choice in drink. “You’re really taking this… aesthetic thing too far, huh. Almost rivalling Owain there, now.”

Gerome rolls his eyes at Inigo and that goofy grin that pulls at the other’s mouth, trying to ignore how giddy Morgan is to hold Inigo’s hand.

“Don’t compare me to him,” Gerome says mildly instead as he takes the first sip of his bitter tea. Bitter like his soul. Bitter like all their souls _should_ be. Gerome really shouldn’t listen to his own thoughts so much; they keep returning to the endless cycle of blame and guilt.

“Don’t mind him,” Morgan says cheerfully. “I think it’s _cool_.”

“I’m not trying to be cool,” Gerome insists as he does his best to ignore the lingering eyes of the other patrons when they see the mask donned on his face. Their stares make his skin itchy; some things never change, and Gerome loathes to think his shyness to be one of those.

“He tries so hard,” Inigo says, “and gets so far, but…”

“Finish that sentence and I will end you, Inigo.” Owain and Inigo’s friendship tests _everyone’s_ nerves.

Inigo raises his unoccupied hand in surrender. “Just fulfilling a promise to my friend.”

“You promised Owain to be as annoying as possible in his stead?” Gerome narrows his eyes while Morgan laughs without any shame.

Inigo grins, somewhat sheepishly. “Something along those lines. But hey, if Morgan likes it, is it _really_ annoying?”

“Yes,” Gerome says, glaring at Morgan next, although a little more softly. “Don’t encourage him or Owain, for Naga’s sake.”

Morgan smiles at him, his nose wrinkling with the grin. “No way. It’s too funny to stop.”

Rather, Gerome thinks, it’s because Morgan is entirely too fond of Inigo, but he’d rather die than voice that thought out loud.

Instead, he takes a long-suffering sip of his tea and pretends the darkness of his clothes and mask swallow him from everyone’s view.

At least he’s managed to hide most of his feelings into the folds of his heart, where no one could see them, not even himself.

 

*

 

_“Oh, come now,” Inigo insists. “It’s obvious he feels the same way.”_

 

*

 

It’s Morgan that pulls Gerome away from his tent when the nightmares return, and it is Morgan that holds Gerome’s hand when he asks Gerome to talk about it.

In the dark, Morgan blends into the shadows and Gerome can’t read his face. Gerome’s face is bare, without the mask to cover it, so he’s entirely too easy to read if Morgan squints enough in the early morning darkness.

Gerome’s tired enough to not put up a fight about it. He’s even tired enough to hold onto Morgan’s hand like it’s his last lifeline.

He tells Morgan about his life back in the future, of his mother’s death, of the time when Gerome had joined up with Lucina and Morgan and their cause rather unwillingly.

“You - you were all about Robin and her wishes there too,” Gerome says, syllables unsteady as he shivers in the night. Sometimes the dark is not as comforting as he tells himself it to be: the dark might shield him, but it keeps his emotions raw and deep, overwhelmingly so.

In the dark, he can’t see a way out of it.

“You knew her even less than I knew my mother,” Gerome says, “and yet you still had so much faith. Still do.”

If their future is bleak and destroyed, Morgan is its firefly: weak and insignificant in size, yet casts its light for those that wander in the night.

Somewhere, a grasshopper rubs its feet together, which sing the tune for a summer night.

Gerome falls silent as words fail him; Morgan’s hands hold his sweaty one and they are cold, cool, and so gentle Gerome has trouble understanding it.

“Hey,” Morgan says. Surprisingly, it makes Gerome relax and the numbness go away. He again registers the warmth Morgan’s hands offer. “It’s ok. I have all sorts of nightmares even though I don’t remember a thing. I don’t know how to explain them either.”

Morgan doesn’t wait long until he continues in a hushed tone, “It’s not the same here, but back then, mother used to kiss my face until I fell asleep again after nightmares woke me up.”

“I’m not a child,” Gerome insists hoarsely.

“I like you all the same,” Morgan says, echoes of cheer back in his words, and Gerome can see the twist of a smile. The moss beneath their feet don’t make a sound when Morgan stands on his tiptoes.  “I wouldn’t like you this much if you were a child, really.”

“Right,” Gerome huffs, but soon chokes on an inhale of breath when Morgan presses a kiss against his maskless cheek. Even Morgan’s lips are warm, burning at Gerome’s freezing skin.

“I’m here for you, okay?” Morgan words warm Gerome’s cheeks right up. “Anytime, all the time.”

“You don’t mean that,” Gerome tries, to no avail, to not believe in Morgan’s words.

As he did back in the future, he fails spectacularly.

  


 

*

 

Inigo sighs at him. The sound is barely audible over Minerva’s mild screeches of _I have never seen a more pathetic meal, Gerome_ (or so Gerome liberally interprets to Inigo), but audible nonetheless.

“There are only so many things that a _kiss_ can mean, you beautiful fool,” he argues like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“He kisses _you_ too,” Gerome points out and throws more of deer meat at Minerva, whose jaws snap shut around the offered meal. “He holds your hand. It’s obvious he’s fonder of you than of me.”

Inigo throws an arm around him -- when he came so close, Gerome has no idea -- and says, jovial but serious at the same time, for that is the Inigo Way, “I’ll let you in on a secret. You can care romantically for more than one person at a time.”

“Huh.” Gerome actually looks at him then, wearing an impassive face but his thoughts running miles per second. “I thought that was just you.”

Inigo sighs again, all drama and bravado, and squeezes Gerome close to himself and ignores the other stumbling. “That’d be heart-breaking, if that were the case. Luckily for us - it’s not.”

Gerome finds that _hope_ can be equally as suffocating as despair now that it fills him up from head to toes.

 

*

 

It takes time to figure out, time that Gerome could use for something else but which he spends pondering over his feelings for his friends in horrid detail, each mental process more excruciatingly explicit than the preceding ones.

Minerva gives her input on the matter, naturally. Minervykins has good insight despite - or because of - not being human or in a relationship.

Gerome makes no mention of the matter to Cherche - a woman that hasn’t got even her own love life managed isn’t one to inquire about anything like this from - but she figures him out anyway.

Which is either a miracle, or dear Minervykins is more talkative than Gerome gives her credit for.

Cherche, in any case, sits him down during one of their now commonplace grooming sessions with their Minervas, the twin wyverns each finding joy in watching the mother-son duo with the undead glare typical of wyverns.

Cherche and Gerome both know those stares to be full of affection.

But that is not why Cherche pushes him into the grass before sitting beside him and peering at him with motherly concern written all over her face. It reminds Gerome of his _actual_ mother so much that he tries to look away. There’s no escape, however.

“Gerome,” she says. He tries not to be happy to hear her say his name, but emotions have been besting him lately and they’re not stopping.

“Mother,” he says and his tone isn’t entirely bland for once. There’s _sass_ , and he doesn’t know where he’s picked that up from.

(Answer: his mom, actually.)

“Oh, you,” she smiles at him, eyes crinkling, and brushes the extra hair away from his mask and cheek, tucking the strands behind his ears. “I think Minerva has said so too, but you look handsome when you keep your hair down and loose.”

In the distance near the tents, the Shepherds are making awful lot of noise, but nothing deters Cherche’s attention now that it’s on her son.

Gerome’s cheeks burn.

“I’m sure Robin’s boy thinks so too,” Cherche continues, and her eyes twinkle with tease, “if him turning to look at you five times during breakfast alone is any hint. Not to mention that Inigo boy.”

_Morgan likes him more,_ Gerome wants to insist, but the twin wyverns are glaring at him and it’s them alone that make his heart and mental guards melt. Not his mother.

It’s like he loves both Minervas. They’re hardly the same, but Gerome finds that love - no matter the variety of it -  doesn’t discriminate once it strikes.

(And, this is a secret he will keep to himself: he loves his young mother dearly as well.)

 

*

 

When he finds them that night, well. It’s not how he expects this to go, but that’s how life likes to treat him.

“Intercourse in the forest doesn’t seem all that safe given the perils of this time period,” he says to the two that are seemingly intent on eating each other’s faces off. There’s a lot of saliva involved, and Gerome is a little more than very grossed out by the sight.

He doesn’t want to know where Inigo’s leg is right now either. His face beneath the mask burns hot enough as it is.

“So, uh,” Inigo breaks the silence, even though he’s obviously the most shaken one, “feel like having some jolly good time with us, buddy?”

“He likes being manhandled!” Morgan pipes up from beneath Inigo, and bursts into a fit of giggles that is both inappropriate and kind of cute. Inappropriately cute.

“I am… painfully aware.” Gerome squints. In the dying light of twilight, he can’t see Morgan very well as Inigo has moved in the way, carefully positioned to hide Morgan from anyone’s sight.

Apparently Inigo gave it more consideration than Gerome assumed.

“There’s room for another one, you know,” Inigo continues, face flushing redder than the red over the horizon. It’s either from the effort of holding himself up on his arms or embarrassment, but Gerome can’t tell which one it is now.

“Doesn’t look like it,” he says, and it is then that Inigo gets off Morgan and rises just enough to pull Gerome down by his wrist, laughing when Gerome groans in pain from the sudden contact with the ground and Morgan’s side.

“I will _kill_ you if I get any grass stains on my clothes,” he bites out through the initial pain and loss of breath as he settles down and Morgan moves so he’s sandwiched between Gerome and Inigo.

“Sure,” Morgan says as he nuzzles at the side of Gerome’s neck while Inigo’s fingers work on pulling the mask away from his face. In the distance, cicadas are making disruptive noise as the summer night deepens and darkens the sky.

They don’t do much of stargazing, though - not when they see stars in one another, either in one another’s eyes or Morgan’s freckles.

(And it is as they say, once the dicks are out, there’s very few distractions from that.)

 

*

 

“Once this is over,” Inigo says when one of his fits of insecurity strikes with the final battle looming near, “we’ll go together, right?”

He’s tired, like the rest of them, but Inigo clings to hope like Morgan clings to his mother’s teachings and, currently, to Gerome.

Gerome likes to think he’s the more realistic out of the three of them, but now that he’s forced into these two’s companionship, he finds their attitudes to rub off on him like a contagious disease.

Morgan is the first to respond: he’s always been a people-pleaser. He’s also somewhat sleepy, cuddled up against Gerome’s side. The words come out in a drowsy stumble, but with genuine warmth that seeps below Gerome’s ribs. “There’s no doubt about it.”

“Like you’d survive on your own,” Gerome says. A beat of silence. “Minerva is unfortunately fond of you.”

Inigo sniffles into Morgan’s hair, but his smile warms his voice, fondness present in each syllable. “You try too hard to be mean, Gerome.”

“Be quiet,” Gerome shushes him when Morgan shifts. “ _One of us_ is trying to actually sleep.”

Morgan snorts his laughter against Gerome’s undershirt, his nose pressing awkwardly into his collarbone. “S’ok, I don’t want to sleep if you’re awake.”

Gerome has never told Morgan of his sleep troubles, and he’s not about to do so now. “We’ll sleep soon. Don’t be stubborn.”

Inigo and Gerome hold hands over Morgan’s hip, their fingers entwined, and they press their palms against Morgan for reassurance.

“Mm, if you say so,” Morgan murmurs, lifting his head enough to press his lips against Gerome’s cheek. “Inigo, I’m too sleepy to turn around, but I’m kissing you in my head too.”

“Mmm,” Inigo hums, words slurring. His fingers burn between Gerome’s beneath the blankets carelessly thrown over the three of them. Inigo sputters then, spitting some of Morgan’s hair out of his mouth.  “I’m kissing your head, so s’fine.”

Gerome sighs and shifts until he’s comfortably on his side, Morgan’s head now resting on the pillows rather than Gerome’s chest, and closes his eyes as the familiar wait for sleep begins.

Vigilantly he listens as Morgan and Inigo’s breaths settle down into a more predictable, deeper rhythm that comes with sleep and relaxation, with letting go of awareness.

That’s always been the hardest part of it for Gerome.

Some things will never change, but with enough time, coincidences and effort, even impossible becomes possible.

Gerome smiles when he falls asleep.

That’s a first, too.

 

*

 

_“I love you, you know.” Inigo is always nervous about unrequited affection when he’s serious about it. Gerome knows it’s genuine when instead of a playful wink Inigo’s words are accompanied with a trembling smile._

_Gerome doesn’t get the chance to respond, not when Lucina is already leading them into the desirable past._

_Inigo’s nervous smile and fidgety hands are the last he sees of this timeline, and perhaps it is better that way._

_One last memory of the old days to hold close to his heart._

**Author's Note:**

> This was an adventure! This is my first time writing for Awakening, so I'm not entirely confident, but what is writing if not trying out new things and challenging oneself, right?


End file.
